A funny thing happened on the way to retirement

My first job interview after completing my graduate studies, was with the US Navy NAS Patuxent River. One of the job perks was a back seat ride. But you had to do a simulated ejection seat to qualify.

I did not accept the job offer, so never got the experience, but I would have been willing!

Slick
 
texasSlick said:
so never got the experience, but I would have been willing
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You should read the book The Right Stuff sometime. In situations where the plane is in trouble pilots will do almost anything to avoid using the ejection seat because the consequences are quite often severe. The gentleman it the above story was extremely lucky for the lack of injuries. The pilot had "the right stuff" as he was able to land the plane in spite of the malfunctions including a hole in his canopy.
I would have really liked to have been a fly on the wall during that debriefing.
 
grandpaul said:
I would love to do that
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You are literally risking your life. The chances of broken bones, back etc is very high even if everything goes right. Loosing a limb can easily happen if your arm, leg whatever is not in the right place when you eject. The gentleman in the story was very lucky. On the other hand he will have a story that will be difficult to top.
 
oldbeezer said:
You are literally risking your life. The chances of broken bones, back etc is very high even if everything goes right. Loosing a limb can easily happen if your arm, leg whatever is not in the right place when you eject.
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Same applies to racing in a Formula 1 sidecar...
A funny thing happened on the way to retirement


Of course I was still 10 years from retirement at the time...

Curiously, there was an AHRMA official who occasionally rode "monkey", quite an experienced fellow, he'd fallen off TWICE, at speed, and wasn't seriously injured; others have fallen off and were killed instantly. Yes, it's all about where and how you fall off, and what you HIT...

...we won't even get into racing on the Isle of Man...
 
The real thing ejection seat experience is every bit a dangerous thing, as oldbeezer says. A simulated ejection seat is a piece of cake. The seat is attached to a vertical rail, and there is no canopy to get in the way. The novice gets to practice the "get out" preparation, and experience the g force involved, after that it is like a ride at the amusement park.

Besides the permissible back seat rides, after the mission of the flight was accomplished, pilots would let the engineers have off the record hands on stick time.

Sometimes I wonder which way my life would have unfolded, had I taken that job.

Slick
 
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In my experience as sidecar passenger, no injuries falling off. But after returning the flipped-over outfit on the wheels again to get the angry driver out, it was close to getting severe injuries.
 
We won both races in our class, so I don't think Rick was holding back (Willow Springs, CA); I had arm-pump more severe after 10 minutes than any time in my life. NO WAY was I going to let go.
 
grandpaul said:
Same applies to racing in a Formula 1 sidecar...
View attachment 15536

Of course I was still 10 years from retirement at the time...

Curiously, there was an AHRMA official who occasionally rode "monkey", quite an experienced fellow, he'd fallen off TWICE, at speed, and wasn't seriously injured; others have fallen off and were killed instantly. Yes, it's all about where and how you fall off, and what you HIT...

...we won't even get into racing on the Isle of Man...
Click to expand...
Respect !
 
oldbeezer said:
You are literally risking your life. The chances of broken bones, back etc is very high even if everything goes right. Loosing a limb can easily happen if your arm, leg whatever is not in the right place when you eject. The gentleman in the story was very lucky. On the other hand he will have a story that will be difficult to top.
Click to expand...

Wasn't it the Dornier 335 that had such a convoluted escape procedure, part of which was manually jettisoning the hood via two levers attached to it? Arms were lost as there was scant time to let them go once the slipstream caught the canopy :-(
 

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